


of days gone by

by Anjali_Organna



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-29
Updated: 2015-04-29
Packaged: 2018-03-26 09:17:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3845476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anjali_Organna/pseuds/Anjali_Organna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Iris remembers.</p><p>[Post 1x20; Cisco isn't the only one dreaming about the alternate timeline.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	of days gone by

It’s not actually strange for Iris to dream about Barry. She dreams about him often, always has. Sometimes they’re back in school, reliving that horrible year in seventh grade when they both had mean Mrs. Summers for homeroom; sometimes they’re with her dad, doing mundane family things. When he was in the coma, she dreamt, all the time, of him waking up. Those dreams were the worst, because they ended.

She never dreams about Eddie, but she doesn’t think anything of it--she has friends who describe dreaming about their crushes or about people they’re in relationships with, romantic dreams, even sex dreams. Iris has never experienced that. She used to joke that her subconsciousness seems to lack a dirty streak, and her friends speculated about what she could do to encourage it.

So this dream is something different. Something unsettling.

*

She is running down to the waterfront. The skies are overcast and stormy, and her hair whips in and out of her eyes. The paramount feeling is one of fear: there’s something urgently wrong--her dad, her dad is in trouble. She needs to save him. 

And of course, Barry is there by her side, as he has been for everything important in her life. Something terrible is going to happen, Iris knows it, and she has no idea what the two of them are going to do about it. He seems more determined, and she’s willing to follow his lead. She trusts him. Barry is here, so things might just turn out okay.

Lightning crashes overhead. Iris’s dread spikes. Barry tells her she needs to go.

Her entire being rebels. This is wrong, this is not--Iris is not going to leave him. Not when her father is in trouble, not when the skies are turning black, not when--

Not when she hasn’t told him.

In the dream, there’s no hesitation. The world might be ending, but this cannot wait. She’s waited too long already.

The way his face changes, going from confusion to disbelief to incandescent joy. _I’ve never stopped thinking about you._

Her heart feels like it’s going to fly up out of her chest. 

Then his hand, warm at the back of her neck, pulling her in.

And this kiss, this is _everything,_ this is what Iris didn’t even know she’d been waiting for. This kiss is swelling music and magical lighting and cameras swooping around the hero and heroine in movies, _this kiss._ This moment.

*

Iris always wakes up with the feeling of Barry’s lips on her own. The first time it had happened, she’d sat straight up in bed, hand going to her mouth, heart racing. Eddie had stirred, rolling over, and she’d gone bolting to the bathroom before he could wake up fully. She’d sat down on the toilet seat, trembling.

It had started to fade almost immediately, but she could still remember bits and pieces:

_Iris, you need to get out of here--_

_I’m not leaving you!_

_Ever since the night you told me how you felt, I have not been able to stop thinking about you._

She'd sat back. The cold from the porcelain seeped through her thin t-shirt.

Ever since that night…

She’d rubbed a hand over her face. Of course not. She’s fine. It's just a dream.

*  
She remembers, a few weeks earlier, Barry’s bizarre lightning-caused behavior. She’d been so relieved when Caitlin had explained things. She’d thought everything could go back to normal. And now, this damn dream.

*

After the third time, Iris Googles “reoccurring dreams.” She is not reassured by what she reads. _“Theoretically, recurrent dreams are assumed to reveal the presence of unresolved conflicts or stressors in an individual’s life.”_

Barry is her best friend, of course she’d been spun off her axis when he’d told her about his feelings for her. It is natural for a girl to feel unsettled about it, even months later. She’s just trying to regain her footing, that’s all, and if it’s taking a bit longer than even she had realized, so be it.

She decides that maybe the dream is just another way of processing things: Dream Iris is going down the alternate path so Real Iris can live her life. With Eddie. That’s gotta be it.

*

The thing is, no dream has ever felt this real before. And so consistently the same: no detail ever changes, even the things they say to each other.

_At first I was really mad--_

Yeah. Iris is starting to get a little pissed off about all of this.

*

She can’t get mad at _Barry,_ of course. She’d already gone through that, back when he’d first told her. But this--Barry has nothing to do with this. And it would be beyond unfair for her to talk to him about it. The last thing she wants to do is hurt him, again.

She tries not to think about it. She doesn’t think about the way Barry’s arms feel holding her, doesn’t think about the way he looks at her, and especially doesn’t think about the kiss.

It’s a little scary, how good Iris gets at not thinking about it. About how easy it becomes to pretend like everything’s fine. She hopes the dreams stop. She can’t imagine having to pretend like this, all the time. Having to lie.

*

She throws herself into work. She can’t think of anything else to do, and besides, with Mason gone, someone has to look into all the weird shit that’s been happening. She feels a growing excitement as she pores through documents, going through old emails and tips, compiling the evidence. It fits, it nearly all fits, and Iris is filled with a sense of rightness. 

Tracking down leads, filling in the blanks. This is where she belongs, this is who she’s meant to be. The story is incredible, but so what? Iris knows in her gut that she’s on the right path.

But because the story is incredible and because Iris isn’t actually an idiot, she decides to run it by someone first before taking it to her bosses. Someone who revels in the strange and incredible, someone who has always been interested in the truth, no matter how difficult. Someone who has always listened to her.

Barry can’t get out of her presence fast enough. He nearly stumbles on his way out the door. And Iris is left behind. 

She’d told him that she hadn’t even gone to Eddie yet, which is--Eddie is a cop. And her boyfriend. She _should_ have gone to her cop boyfriend first. But she didn’t. She’d thought of Barry instead.

_And then I realized that the reason I couldn’t stop thinking about you was because I didn’t want to._

Iris closes her eyes.

*

“...Barry?” She holds perfectly still for a moment, hoping against hope that something--anything--would happen to alter the last few minutes. She can hear the wind moving over water below her, the distant noise of traffic in the city. Her hand is still tingling.

She stumbles over to the railing, thinks she’s going to be sick. She’s arrested by the sight of STAR Labs lit up across the water. STAR Labs, where Barry has spent so much of his time. And then her head snaps back and--

They’re kissing. She knows that it’s the same kiss, she’s relived it enough over the past few weeks. But this time she doesn’t wake up. This time, Barry pulls away. Her cheeks are wet and she can hardly believe this is happening, but a terrible noise pulls their attention back to the water. Iris stares. Barry’s on the phone, but she can’t even process that, her entire being focused on the wave of water heading towards the shoreline.

Then his voice, pulling her back. _I’m so sorry. I didn’t want you to find out this way._

Iris comes back to herself. She sinks down on the bridge, clutching her knees.

*

She’s not convinced it’s a dream anymore. She thinks, briefly, that it’s possible her subconscious decided on its own that Barry is the Flash, but the truth is, too much else about it fits. He was the one part of her theory that hadn’t worked, and now it does. 

She’s not sure how long she stays there, thinking. The thing is, there’s nowhere she can go. Not to her apartment, the one she shares with Eddie. Not home. Not even to Jitters--and her vision briefly goes black with rage, just thinking about all the times he’d--

No. Don’t go there yet. Focus. 

Iris stands, dusts herself off, starts across the bridge. It’s a long way, but she could use the time. She begins cataloguing all the things she knows now to be true, which is just a different way of saying all the things that she’s been lied to about. 

She’s going to finish this story. She was _right,_ dammit, and Barry can go to hell, and this dream-thing that might not actually be a dream can go to hell, and every fucking thing that hurts too much to think about can just. Go. To. Hell. She’s a reporter. She’s damn well gonna go report.

She makes it back to the street and a cab goes by at that moment, which almost never happens. She thinks maybe the universe is trying to make it up to her. It barely even comes close, but she’ll take it.

She slides in, nods at the driver. “Take me to STAR Labs,” she says.

**

**Author's Note:**

> So obviously Iris is in a rageful position at the end of this, which is really the only result that can happen at this point. I'm just gonna wait to see how the show handles The Confrontation.


End file.
